Quarantine Edition: Vinyl Music Documentary Reviews! I Love Discogs! Bandcamp Fees and More!
I'm sending a different type of newsletter this week, mostly recommending a few documentaries about record collecting and a couple of interesting articles I've read as of late.
The below documentaries, I believe, expire on April 30th, so if you want to rent them online, do so quickly.
Documentaries:
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Other Music - This was my favorite of the three documentaries we watched. Other Music was a tiny independent record store in NYC that survived 20+ years, some of those located directly across Tower Records. It follows the staff and owners of the store as they begin to close their doors in the summer of 2016. I found it interesting that their heyday of success was when CDs were most popular, not records. They survived the downturn of CDs when digital sales and iTunes took over, but they can't replace the business on selling new vinyl in today's market. I'm sure the increasing rent in NYC played a huge role as well. Warning, the closing of the shop is a tear jerker.
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Record Safari - Alex Rodriguez drives across the country buying records to stock the Coachella festival record store. I enjoyed the idea of making this same trip and buying records more than actually watching someone else do it, but during this time of quarantine, it struck me just how bad I'm itching to get out and go record shopping again.
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Vinyl Nation - Produced by the folks who put on Record Store Day, Vinyl Nation came across for me too much as a beginner's guide to buying and collecting records. It just seemed elementary for those of us who have been buying records for decades. I would show this to teenagers just getting into record collecting in an effort to pass the vinyl torch down to future generations. Renting the movie provided funds to support local stores so I'm happy we watched it.
Reading:
I still defend the relevance of the CD today even though they are being treated as one of the worst formats to ever be created. Pop a CD in today and compare the sound to streaming, and you will see what I mean. Sure, they are a digital format, but they still sound better than the compressed audio streams from services today. That being said, I enjoyed reading this Pitchfork article by Grayson Haven Currin, praising his old school case logic CD carrying case and the music contained within. If you like travel writing and music writing, this is a great article to read.
As a child of the 80s/90s, I miss the organic sounds of sample based hip hop but have worked in the music business long enough to understand the need for properly licensing the samples (which isn't cheap). The Library of Congress is creating a tool to allow public domain music available in their archives to be sampled by producers via a tool called Citizen DJ (which hasn't fully launched yet). This could be a wonderful resource for producers to include samples again in music and give that analog/organic sound a resurgence by using music that's been long forgotten but is easy to clear now. Brian Foo says it best, "Today, collage-based hip hop as it existed in the golden age is largely a lost (or at best, a prohibitively expensive) artform. I believe if there was a simple way to discover, access, and use public domain audio and video material for music making, a new generation of hip hop artists and producers can maximize their creativity, invent new sounds, and connect listeners to materials, cultures, and sonic history that might otherwise be hidden from public ears."
Bandcamp announced they are waiving fees again for three more days in 2020, the most recent is this Friday, May 1st and again on June 5th and July 3rd. I went crazy on their last fee waiving day and so did others with Bandcamp collecting $4.3 million dollars in a single day! Basically, every dollar you spend on their site on these days goes straight the artist. I've sold music on Bandcamp before and it just shows up in your Paypal, nice and easy. Scanning their site to find things to buy can be daunting but if you need any recommendations, let me know. I picked up some great music last month.
I'm using quarantine time to catch up on Discogs filing. I've finally come up with system to make sure I'm entering all new purchases immediately before I listen. I reorganized my entire collection back in early April and that was a wonderful feeling but unfortunately this mixed up albums I have entered with ones I have yet to enter. Bummer. I'm going to start going through each cube now and catching up on finding the missing LPs and get them entered. I've also finally started organizing my entires in folders which I love. For instance, I put all of my 45s into a folder labeled 45 and I can simply reference this when building a DJ set instead of flipping through the boxes searching for a 45. I also created folders for Jazz and Gospel Soul since I often forget what I own in these genres. Sure, I know I have plenty of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, but I'd most likely forget about Anthony Williams' Spring LP because I wouldn't scan my collection all the way into the W's before finding something else to play. Really enjoying this tool. All of that to say, this time of quarantine can be hard to wrap the brain around with so much time floating around. I've found this Discogs project has taken some of that anxiety away. I will get back to sending some great songs discovered in the next edition. With thrift stores closed, I haven't had a chance to find anything too out of the ordinary to share!
Stay home. Stay safe.
Thanks for reading and subscribing to this newsletter. You can find more of my writing at my website: aaronhartley.me.
Also, check out the Aaron Calling podcast where I call one of my best friends, Aaron Ford, to talk about music, records and more. Listen on Apple or Spotify!